Deposition of various materials on surfaces can facilitate achievement of a wide variety of goals such as improving mechanical wear, corrosion resistance, chemical reactivity, catalytic value, and a number of other beneficial properties. More specifically, many metals and metal species can be used as catalytic agents. Of significant commercial interest are processes for the synthesis of hydrocarbons from common sources. The Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) synthesis of hydrocarbons from syn gas (predominantly CO and H2) mixtures is a process of great economic importance, particularly overseas. Given the uncertainties in future oil supplies, the F-T process may well assume greater global importance. From the vast amount of work in this area, it is well recognized that the most active catalysts incorporate iron, cobalt, and ruthenium on oxide supports. Unfortunately, many current catalyst materials are often expensive, have limited useful life, and/or have limited catalyst loading and yields.
In addition, conventional catalyst preparation on various supports involves precipitation of metal compounds. More specifically, a carrier or support material can be optionally evacuated and then contacted with an impregnating solution. Excess solution is removed and the carrier is dried and then calcined, i.e. decomposed to form a metal oxide. Often the calcined product is then activated at a later time such as in situ immediately prior to use. Most often these methods produce randomly distributed metal oxides or metals and can suffer from non-selective deposition across the support surface. As a result, catalyst metals tend to associate with one another merely by proximity or by chance. This is especially problematic in multi-metallic catalysts where improved catalytic activity is the result of the combined synergistic effects of each of the constituent co-catalysts. In such products, conventional random deposition techniques result in reduced catalytic activity than might theoretically be expected from the combination of certain co-catalysts. Therefore, materials and methods which provide improved catalytic effects would be useful in this and other areas of technology which involve deposition of metals or other materials on a surface.